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Wanted to get into it in the Pacific Northwest. RPing in online games sucks, so curious if it's fun.
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>>97638338
I LARP but I'm a britbong, and AFAIK our larp styles are pretty different. You won't find boffer weapons in british larp. Never read or played a US larp system but I understand they come from a different place.
British larp owes a large amount of its rules to runequest, since the OG brit larp was Treasure Trap, built off runequest in the 80s.
If you wanna read UK larp rules, Lorien Trust and Empire are probably the two big ones currently running to go look up. LT is more oldschool, Empire is newer (started some time in the 2010s, run by the same people who ran Maelstrom before that).
Epire and LT are both rules systems designed to be able to run large scale battles at national events. There are plenty of smaller systems that are built around smaller events, local scale stuff. I ain't gonna doxx exactly where in the country I am, but you will find university societies and such running games for parties of under 20 players, and there IS a difference in how the rules work because you have a lot of different things going on.
You cannot pause an entire BATTLE of a hundred people because one person got injured, or to resolve an AoE effect. You can pause a 10-man skirmish. That means eg Empire has no complex magical effects that require people to *stop* what they are doing in battle, that is reserved for out of combat ritual that takes minutes to perform. Similarly, range becomes an issue. You can't reliably say what a spell does from range across a battlefield, so magic is touch. Arrows are arrow and have one effect, because the guy who fired the arrow is a long way off. Meanwhile in a smaller system, I might be able to yell
>CRAIG, POISON ARROW
when I shoot someone, so in a skirmish scale game you can have that kind of complex system call
or a spell that does something wacky to everyone.
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>>97639487
As for what LARP is like for RP, there are some significant upsides to LARP and some downsides too.
You are playing in real time with a limited group of people, which means that you have way more opportunity for the natural pace of conversation to force small talk and roleplay. You have all day to relax into character. Because even combat is mostly real time, you have a continuity of experience that just ain't there in tabletop.
Because everyone is making at leats a token attempt to appear in-character and is physically acting and roleplaying, again it's easier to keep IC.
The downside of course is less ability to time skip and handwave. If you are attacking at dusk and it's currently 2pm, you've got hours to kill. If your character is doing something complex that takes a few hours of reading, you need to go find a book.
LARP will test your ability to improvise, but in fun ways. I love constructing rituals, and there's basically never a time in tabletop where you're gonna get to do that regularly. Meanwhile, I can enjoy spending several hours thinking about exactly what to do and say as a head ritualist, what prompts to give to the other players taking part in a call and response fashion, and what symbolism to invoke. If you cast a spell that takes three or five minutes of "casting" in tabletop that'll usually be skipped over because in tabletop, nobody wants to sit there and listen to you narrate a spell for three minutes straight.
And yet when you're doing it with a group that has opted into casting or observing a ritual, with accoutrements and pauses and flourishes? It becomes very fun, even if you know somewhere at the back of your mind that you look like a colossal nerd.
Sorry I can't give you any pointers to groups in your area, there is an ocean between us.
And one warning. There is ALWAYS politics. LARP falls to the problems of IC and OC social power overlaps, there will be cliques and there will be people wielding power.
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>>97639500
Other shit you need to be aware of when LARPing
You will cringe. At yourself and at others. You just gotta get over it. You are a nerd wearing silicone ear tips, calling himself Tanimael the Elf, Battle Chanter of Raumia, Slayer of the Black Guardian. That guy over there is an orc, not a guy in a rubber mask. He's Groshgar Manrender, and you and him have a silent understanding that when Groshgar "goes off to calm down" after a battle, what he's doing is taking off his rubber mask and wiping his face because it gets MOIST in that thing.
Everything needs to be represented somehow, be it by a human or a sign or an object. Get used to asking crew "what/who are you?" or "what is that?". You will get used to maintaining some amount of IC-ness while asking an OC descriptive question.
Further to the above there will be some set of gestures or signs that inform you of things from a distance. I'm used to
>Finger in the air = "I am not here".
Represents someone being either literally not there IC, eg a crew member who is there to operate a trap or describe a scene, or someone who is not here *yet* but will appear later (maybe a character is gonna teleport in)
>Raising and lowering fingers = "I am stealthy"
with # of fingers being how hard they are to spot. Someone raising and lowering 2 fingers = "I am stealth rank 2", so I ignore them if I don't have a counter ability, but if I DO have the power to see Stealth 2 I can spot them.
Your game may do things differently. There may be hand gestures for language, hand gestures for "I am casting a spell".
You will suck at fighting at first. LARP combat is nothing like an actual fight. You will need practise, and a good way to get this is by crewing events. Fight people inbetween scenes. Ask people to show you what they like to use.
Most importantly, and this is GENUINELY the #1 thing, wear sensible footwear and have an underlayer you can wear or remove easily. You do not wanna be cold innawoods in leaking shoes.
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The hierarchy of faggotry for /tg/ hobbies
>tabletop wargames
Nerdy but generally socially acceptable, plenty of notretards play it
>trading card games
Similar to above but the level of faggotry and autism slowly starts to rise here, especially for certain games
>TTRPG
Dangerously gay and nerdy, beware
>literal LARPing
Maximum faggotry, peak gay nerd, NEVER tell anyone outside of your LARP circle that you LARP
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>>97639487
>>97639500
>>97639553
Thank you anon. How often do you attend events? How do you get over the cringe of it?
I was hoping to find something darker that was less character sheets and spellbooks and more horror with death being a regular.
>>97639573
Noted.
>>97640004
Going in balls deep then. Bored of trying to find a vidya game to RP in a world when it seems like Read Dead RP and FiveM are the only ones.
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>>97639553
>Raising and lowering fingers = "I am stealthy"
>with # of fingers being how hard they are to spot. Someone raising and lowering 2 fingers = "I am stealth rank 2", so I ignore them if I don't
How many guys do you get cheesing their way into the highest possible rank to Jazz Hand their way through the entire day?
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>>97640245
>how often
less often in the last few years, but that's mostly for personal reasons
>how do you get over the cringe
with experience and exposure
>something darker
now you are speaking my language. I'll write up a post abour horror larp for you , because it's a very different kettle of fish to fantasy/fest LARP, weekly dungeon crawl student society LARP and all that jazz.
>>97640319 how many people jazz hands through a day
not as many as you'd think, because
1) it gets boring only getting to interact very occasionally since you're hiding all day
2) it gets old being the guy who is OP as fuck once a day, eating all your smarties to blow up one guy from stealth
3) you tend to monster/crew as much as you play, and you experience how joyless it is being on the reciving end
4) we tend to balance systems to avoid a defensive power being always-on at its highest level, or will create monsters whose job is to challenge specific high level players (and we like that, because by the time they bring out "this guy is made to fight the stealth bunny", the stealth bunny is bored of being in a bush all day)
5) CREATING a larp character takes a while. Whatever the cadence, you have to work your way up, and getting to those snacky high end powers or "endgame builds" will take time. If you have a character who gets to do some big cool shit after you've been playing him for two years, that's what you have "earned". It is exceedingly rare that a game lets you have those "top tier" powers at creation or midgame. You might start out with superhuman ability in a vampire LARP but you're still a fledgeling, so your ability to hide all day from mortals is nothing compared to an "elder" (a player who's been here for six years)
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So, horror LARP. I am not gonna post pix here because I know better than to post my face or my friends' faces on 4chan. I might've done so a decade ago, but... not today. Please understand.
It is difficult to run a long term horror game. We become inured to things with exposure. The horror scene I used to be involved in has died down a lot post-covid, which is a shame.
For that reason, most of the horror larp I've seen has been either one-off events, or a series of a few linked events. They came in two sizes, one day and weekend games.
>One day games are much lower budget since you don't have to feed everyone, only need to hire a venue for day use, don't need to sleep people, etc
>Thus weekend games leverage the higher budget and splurge more on props and setting as well
The amount of preparation that goes into a horror game is higher since you're running a more controlled plot. Horror events require good logistics to arrange the cadence of tension and release, and need to work a lot more on roleplay and interaction because your system is intentionally light and skewed against the players.
Typically we'd have
>You have some amount of HP for the event.
>If someone hits you with a punch you lose HP but it comes back with rest
>If someone hits you with a weapon you lose HP and it's gone
>You have some amount of sanity for the event, a character flaw, and a pair of coping mechanisms
>If you are exposed to things that blast your sanity or your flaw comes up in a way that harms you, lose 2 sanity
>If you go off and indulge your coping mechanism(s), get back 1 sanity from a thing that drained your san
other than that, your character is just a bunch of backstory, connections to the event and other PCs, and some "skills" that you are good at
Using those skills is just a case of using them where appropriate. fuckin' roleplay, you are in a role playing game.
As well as supernatural horror, you need characters who will upset one another and trigger each others' flaws.
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A typical horror event might have 10-20 players, 2-4 referees who have written the event, and 2-6 crew who help run things but weren't putting in the hours of setup. Refs are also doing logistics, buying food, renting the venue. Prop construction is refs + crew + whoever else they need to ask for help.
If you look at a oneshot horror adventure module that takes place over 12-72 hours of in-game time and is limited to a single area of play, that's basically what you can expect, with the limitations that supernatural special effects are rare, monsters are "dudes in costume", and we have to take into consideration that the players will NOT have a good time if they are deprived of food, shelter, and sleep.
Yes, you may think you want a 72 hour horror experience where you get two meals, six hours sleep, and are outside the whole time. You might actually want that.
Most players don't.
Our experience trying to run games where we highly limited out of character necessities was that it lessened the experience. If someone is gonna have a nighmare at 3am because they touched a jewel linked to the plot and the big bad is gonna invade their mind, you go to them at 10pm as they are going to bed, you tell them "You're gonna have a nightmare" and you play them a video or tell them what happens. You brief anyone who's sharing their room that they wake screaming at 3am. And then you let them roleplay.
A one-day game is typically very cheap, while a weekend game might have a cost of £150-200. For that weekend game you turn up friday in the early afternoon, the game starts ~4pm, and continues until some time on sunday. You're effectively buying an all inclusive holiday with entertainment. My experience was always that you lose money, and more importantly you do a shitload of unpaid labour, but you have fun the whole time.
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>>97638338
I've been larping for about 5 years now, it is very fun, but it's a fragile fun. Think of all the ways people can fuck up rpgs, then think of all the ways people can fuck up something like a convention, then think of all the ways people can fuck up a camping trip. Any or all of those things can happen at a larp, and the people doing it are dorks of the highest order. The drama is retarded and always bubbling away under the surface. Cliques are unfortunately common and so are schisms where a bunch of established players and cast get in a fight with the game owners and go try to start their own game with blackjack and hookers. The most fun I've had is going with a group of friends and deliberately going out of our way to try and bring newer players into our schemes so they wouldn't feel excluded. I would recommend joining the cast of a game if you don't have any friends starting with you, usually it's free because cast is how the game even happens. They'll probably put you on as "crunch" NPCs, one of the orcs in the horde that's attacking, one of the bandits out by the bridge, maybe a townsfolk in the tavern, stuff like that. You're there to facilitate the players activities. Cast who stick with it longer can develop face rolls, but a lot just stick with crunch. Depending on the game, they might give you XP for casting that you can apply to your PC.
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>>97638338
It all depends on the group and the player base. There is a wide gap in quality in American larp. Any larp that's not utter shit should allow you to show up (probably escorted) to undisruptly observe it for a hour or two so you can get a feel for how they are.
The game I play offers that your first game is free. But for us a good strategy is NPC for about three games. It comes to:
>no charge for the game
>all costume, makeup, equipment provided
>get hands on experience in a safe manner. As in your a NPC so your new PC didn't get killed or made PC enemies due to newb ignorance
>as a new player you usually play simple low level chum, many times on encounters for other new players that are not loaded down with a confusing pile of special powers
>get bonus XP for your PC
>get some perks
Then play as your PC with a bit more XP and money.
>There is ALWAYS politics. LARP falls to the problems of IC and OC social power overlaps, there will be cliques and there will be people wielding power.
Very this. As example in my local game the Elves have grabbed the levers of power and surrounded themselves with useful idiots. The Dark Elves are basically mobsters. There is a gentleman agreement between them that if the Dark Elves don't fuck with the Elves schemes they turn a blind eye to the Darks activities. Sometimes coin and favors from the Elves go to the Darks when the Elves want a bother delt with while keeping their hands clean. Even out of game the top Elf player holds hangouts and barbecues for player to hobknob and him to solidify power. The top Dark Elf has occasional out of game bonfire meets for the other Dark Elves and some allies. For us it's not a dystopia or anything, you can play a normal life, it's just your on your own.
As to the mention of footwear the local players mostly like boots from House of Andar.
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>>97640667
Character writing and story/game writing is the lion's share of the game preparation, and it's usually 90% game referees and 10% players at most. Refs need to shape the game and that includes what the player characters are like, so you end up with a process like this
Refs come up with the outline of the game, both the Secret True Stuff and the public facing game pitch. That includes some idea of roles and background details that must be present in some player character to make the game work.
Refs publish a pitch and solicit players.
Players submit requests for things they would like and dislike
Refs use player yeas and nays to come up with player character outlines and send those to players, this will be limited stuff like
>You will be Boris Slavovitch, a professor of cosmology. You escaped the USSR in 1976 and were recruited by an english group that called itself The Triangle Society. You drink every day, but don't consider yourself an alcoholic (you are an alcoholic in denial). You've not seen your family in a decade, but you remember your father had a lot of political connections. You have a recurring dream about a strange woman lying in a pool of water, and when you meet [PLAYERNAME] you will recognise her as that woman.
Players give feedback on the character briefs, like
>I have a bad relationship with alcohol OC, I don't want to play an alcoholic
and changes ranging from "OK, your sanity flaw goes from alcoholism to political paranoia - you're sure the KGB are out to get you." to "We are gonna give that character to someone else, you will get a new guy. How about a bumbling butler who is secretly gay?"
Once character briefs are OK'd, the full backgrounds are written
Props are made, the plot of the event is written, and logistics are planned so that you have a roughly hour by hour breakdown of what NPCs will do without input, what plot events happen, what players can do to stop them, etc.
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Where in the Pacific north west??
I'm just outside of BC and there's no scene in my area at all.
Are there merits in going to try the big north American event larps like Bicoline or Hynefol as my first ones? Or traveling to CoM or Drakenfest?
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>>97638338
No but I would like to.
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>>97641482
Portland
There's a lot in the Seattle area. Looks like a lot of them use the same places in the Puget Sound, Tacoma, Olympia area.
https://www.mortalisrpg.com/everett-seattle-tacoma-larp-list/
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>>97640526
I read somewhere there was a problem with vampire/dark larps where people would blow up on the new players cause a lot of the demons, vampires, werewolf players were dependent on a human economy, and some new stat bitch was easy pickings.
I'm fine with that, and playing it like a survival sim even if that level of stat sheet gaming is gay.
>>97641137
Playing an NPC is a good idea. Probably the only way I can exit faggot mode and find a way not to be a retard.
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>>97640757
the drama was my worry. i know to keep my mouth shut with irl. worried there's gonna be super sensitive people in my area.
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>>97642005
My experience is that there are the people who are very sensitive about everything, and then there are the people who smile and nod and agree with them in the least committed way possible in public and are a lot cooler when the babies aren't around.
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Thanks again everyone for all the help.
>>97641198
are most of yours centered around events where it's 75% of the RP or improvisation in a wider area with just a general theme and some story for the event of that month?
Are the NPCs also like helping setup and make food?
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>>97642050
they're /out/ists seeking the great leaf
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>>97638338
I used to think LARPers were really cringey, but like, what's more cringe really? Getting out there and having a good time with others, or worrying that you might not be seen as "cool" and going through life without ever having the experiences you want to have? That said, big and very serious LARP events seem extremely intimidating to me and I wouldn't ever want to dampen other people's fun by roleplaying badly, not knowing the correct LARP language/etiquette, not being adequately prepared, etc.
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>>97642031
good enough for me. thanks anon 8)
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>>97642076
It's our heritage sister
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDtuDbRg6Ic
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>>97638338
Not a LARPer myself, but a friend was pretty active with a LARP group in Texas so I'll just relay what he would talk about. First off, you're camping for the weekend so bring good footwear and a decent camping kit. Nothing quite like being damp with bad shoes on a Saturday morning and not supposed to leave until Sunday. Borrow what you can from friends if you don't already have it since it can be a big buy-in initially. Get real outdoors shoes. Each LARP is it's own microcosm with it's own social structure and drama, so no one can tell how it will go socially until you go and meet people. Some are more welcoming than others to new players. You can look up what you can, but since it's so niche there aren't a lot of people talking about it normally. That being said, all LARPs have their own drama in-game and out-of it and that can shape a lot of what actually happens. I can't count the number of times my buddy has complained about some LARPer complaining about being broke and not sure if they can make rent after having blow a couple hundred dollars on some LARP gear. Also various social drama of X was dating Y and they broke up and are making it everyone's problem. Each LARP might have it's own rules and regulations for gear, so look that up and plan accordingly, although boffers is the norm in the US. Yah, don't trust the shield fuckers, >>97639573
is right. Some people will try to cheat too which is weird. Read the rules, show up expecting to suck, although if you're average fitness or better you can outperform a lot of people on stamina alone, and just see how it feels to you. Might take a couple of times to really form an opinion. A lot of the fun comes from making a character and then becoming it. And if you find a couple of people you enjoy camping and playing with it can be a lot of fun. But you're not really going to know until you show up and see what it's like, unless their social media is nothing but drama then avoid that shit like the plague
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>>97642068
NTA, but at the games I've been to that supply food, only specific people do it, either professionals hired to cater or volunteers with food related qualifications. Sometimes NPCs, sometimes PCs. Set up and break down usually offer people XP or some other in-game benefit if they show up early or stay and help after.
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Shields are more trouble than they're worth unless it's a pure combat game. A lot of games have so many stupid rules around their use that it becomes more of a liability to have one than not. Stuff like not actually blocking most of your body with it, not turtling, size limits that are significantly smaller than most commercial options, requiring multiple inch thick padding around the rim, and no shield walls (which gets interpreted as "don't be facing the same direction as someone else with a shield" more often than actual shield walls form). No bashing or pushing with them is reasonable because most of these games are supposed to be lightest touch combat, but a lot of the other restrictions just make it suck to use one.
Also watch out for anyone with a big two handed weapon. Overhead swings are not as controllable as the person doing it thinks they are. They will hit your head and they will hit you hard. Whether the head being hit at all is an issue or not depends on the game (some allow top of head, some don't allow headshots at all, most say to avoid the face either way), but the force they'll be hitting you with is almost always too much. Whether anyone else cares is another matter.
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>>97638338
/cgl/ has a dedicated larping thread, a lot of the old /tg/ larpers still post there to this day. You'll probably get a lot more info there, hungarian LARPfag alone has probably been posting about larping for 20 years on 4cheongs at this point.
>>>/cgl/10937213
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>>97641957
Vampire LARP is almost entirely dead. The one in my area hung on until 2017 or so but it was on its way out for years before that.
But yeah, Vampire LARP tended to be the most drama prone, because you had the deadly mix of
>High powered old characters are both comparatively strong vs new characters and superhuman
>Personal plot doled out to those characters with consequences
>Structure of vampire life is a gang and a pyramid scheme so new blood has to prove itself
>A lot of rules and powers that interact with social encounters
it led to a LOT of cliquery where if you were new, you had to ingratiate yourself to the oldfags just to get a crumb of plot. In my scene, the vamp larp got rebooted two or three times between the 90s and 2010s because the plot had got long in the tooth and in one case, the plot literally caused more harm the more people knew about it, or so the players thought. So newfags were fucked.
>>97642068
These horror events I'm describing are largely improv on the part of the players, but the game referees have set up a plot in advance so like
>Players are invited to the reading of a will
>The guy who died was a Mi-Go brainjacking victim and he set it up so that his will would be read at a remote house in the yorkshire moors
>The dead guy isn't dead, just permanently moved into his jar in the basement, connected to a telescope, to Think About Space
>The Mi-Go have brainswapped two of the house servants, and are waiting to analyse and steal three (3) people from the 18 at the will reading, wanting the most interesting brains
>It's up to the players to work out what's going on from clues and roleplay, and foil the Mi-Go
>Some players are clearly earmarked for harvesting
>Some players might be into that shit and volunteer
There will be a schedule and some script for the NPCs to a certain degree, like "Mi-Go Meido, Make sure you act emotionally distant and cold over dinner"
In that case, the NPC Maids would also be helping make food.
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